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Tiphaine nodded: I suppose it does look that way, these days. It's sort of a different effect now that most women don't wear pants very often.
Delia handed her the sword belt-her second-best one, with monochrome tooling rather than inlay and a cut-steel buckle, since she was going out for a ride and a picnic, not to a festival-and she put it on, settling it fashionably just above her hips and just below the waistline. The sword was new, made to her preferences by the best war-smith in Forest Grove and layer-forged from fillets of mild steel and tough alloy; double-edged but relatively slender, with a yard of blade tapering to a long, vicious point, checked-ebony hilts and a silver fishtail pommel. She speed-drew it and did a quick figure-eight flourish, making the air hiss as she neatly snipped off a spray of cherry blossoms and cut it in half again before it fell an inch. Then she sheathed the sword again with a sweet tii
"Beautifully balanced," she said with satisfaction, tucking one bunch of the flowers behind her own ear and one behind Delia's; the miller's daughter was wearing her hair in braided coils over the temples. "I don't care what the Period Nazis say; the fifteenth-century model is just way more effective against anyone wearing decent armor than those Franco-Viking meat cleavers."
She gri
Delia sighed and began to dress herself; her interest in swords roughly matched Tiphaine's in furniture. Looking at the asparagus and snowpeas, she said: "Mind if I have the rest of these?"
"Sure, sweetie. I was only eating them because they're fresh," Tiphaine said. "You know, I remember a few things from before the Change-"
"That's more than I do," Delia said, pulling on knitted hose made for riding, with leather inserts on the insides of the thighs, what Tiphaine had heard Sandra call a bastard cross between pantyhose and a sweater.
She paused to eat a stick of the asparagus. "All I really remember is the Change, the way it hurt inside my head, and then being hungry and afraid and Mom and Dad hiding us. I used to remember more, but it gave me bad dreams. And then the Association came that fall: at least we had food, and we went to work helping to build the mill."
Tiphaine shuddered slightly; she had certain memories of her own about those first months that she'd like to be able to forget, and the dreams had gotten less frequent but never gone away entirely. Particularly what had happened to Ms. Darroway, their troop leader, when she got an infected cut on her leg after leading them in fighting off a bunch of would-be Mountain Men who thought a Girl Scout troop was a gift from God. Things had gotten really bad after the wound went gangrenous and she died, until Tiphaine and Kat took off on their own :
With an effort of will, she shook herself back to the present: "Well, what I was going to say was that I really like the taste of cherries, you know-"
She stopped and made an exasperated sound at the other's wide-eyed expression, then laughed; it was hard to look guilelessly surprised when naked to the waist and holding a stalk of asparagus between the teeth, but Delia was bringing it off.
Tiphaine extended an arm and index finger at her: "You were not! Not, not!"
Delia curled her tongue around the asparagus, bit the stalk in half with a flash of white teeth, gathered the pieces into her mouth without using her fingers and then slowly licked her lips, keeping up the i
"God, that has got to be the most lascivious thing I've ever seen!" Tiphaine shook her head, slightly dazed. "Anyway, back then you could get fresh fruit out of season, even if you were just an ordinary person; I remember my mother buying peaches and grapes and things at Christmas. Now I'm rich and I can't have cherries until June. Not even the Lord Protector and the Consort could."
The seamstress finished pulling on her own tunics; for riding, the longer undertunic was split, with a flap that could be buttoned over to close it when on the ground. That and the leggings were the respectable female's solution to riding astride, though some Associate-rank women wore men's clothing for the purpose and a few used a sidesaddle, which was the only way you could back a horse and wear a cotte-hardi at the same time. Lady Sandra's opinion of that was short and pungent, and she'd outright forbidden them at court, with the Protector's backing because sidesaddles weren't period. Of course, cotte-hardis weren't eleventh century either, more like fourteenth, but they'd become firmly established before Norman Arminger noticed.
Against fashion, even tyrants struggle in vain, she thought.
"So," Delia said, putting on her own belt, which had a knife with a legal four-inch blade, the universal tool of the countryside. "If Lady Sandra's sinister and evil but really sort of nice, what's the Lord Protector like?"
The smile died on Tiphaine's face. Wordlessly she extended her hand, palm up, then slowly curled the fingers into crooked predator talons that quivered with the tension in her tendons and strong wrist.
Delia swallowed, silent for a moment. "It's sort of hard to remember sometimes that you're: one of: them."
"Them?" Tiphaine asked.
"The castle-folk-Association people."
Who, we both know very well, aren't too popular with a lot of commoners, Tiphaine thought.
She didn't answer, but instead took a moment to put on her hat, the usual rolled-edge affair with a long palm-broad tail of black silk down one side, and Lady Sandra's livery badge of the Virgin and the Dragon at the front in silver. Today she turned the tail up under her chin and pi
Tiphaine's mouth quirked when she spoke. "You should have thought about that before you asked me to take a look at your embroidered underwear, sweetie. I might have been cruel as well as evil, you know, and you'd have been stuck with me regardless."
"I didn't think so." Delia's spirit bubbled back. "And it was you or Keith, the bailiff's son; his dad had been dropping these awful, heavy hints and Keith wouldn't go away, and my dad's scared of them, they're the bailiffs, after all. And he has pimples and crooked teeth and bad breath and he's mean and his father's worse, and oh, God, he's boring!"
She picked up her own Chinese-style straw hat and mimed throwing up in it. "Besides being a guy."
"Well, I don't have halitosis or pimples, and: " They kissed.
After a moment Delia sighed. "I don't like having to hide, though. We wouldn't have had to do that before the Change, would we?"
Tiphaine laughed grimly. "OK, someday I'll have to tell you about being the 'Designated Homo-Loser-Goat' in Grade Nine at Bi
The excursion party was forming up in the courtyard when Tiphaine and Delia came down; Rudi, Mathilda, two men-at-arms and four mounted cross-bowmen, and a varlet with the two packhorses that carried picnic pa